Seeing things from the curb lane

I had a spirited debate with a motorist on my way into work this morning after chastizing a cabby for parking in the bike lane - a now daily occurence. As I rolled up on the cabby and watched countless cyclists who are less comfortable in high traffic than myself awkwardly jutt out in front of traffic to get around him, I did my usual “touch reminder” to his hood that that was in fact a bike lane and not a parking spot. Typically, he reacted with angry shouting, “why did you hit my car!”. The odd part to me is that they get so upset about you touching their car with your hand but when they touch my soft tissue with their 2 ton hunk of metal I get a bashful, “sorry” - if I’m lucky. However, I digress. The light was about to change to green and at this point another bunch of cyclists were stuck behind him - still in the bike lane but rolling up on my rear tire - as I stopped my bike and blocked him completely. As he continued to yell I slowly - very slowly - turned, smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sorry can you not go around?” I followed this up with a friendly diatribe about how inconvenient it must be to have your entire lane blocked by a vehicle. The cyclists behind him simultaneously broke out in laughter and squeezed past him. As they passed I apologized but said I was tired of it. I’d had enough and it’s time to fight back. They thanked me and continued on their way.

As this was happening, another helpful motorist pulled up next to me and said, “you can’t just hit people’s cars. I charged someone $3000 last week for hitting my car.” What’s this? Random motorists can now charge people with “vehicular assualt”. No, no. Not that vehicular assault. Police don’t bother with such petty incidents. We began to toss points back and forth in a very mildly heated debate - let’s call it tepid. They kept reffering to the fact that I should not bang on people’s cars because it’s expensive and I kept reminding them they were breaking my heart and that in my world you can’t kill people because you feel they’re in your way. They sped away in their confidence of having schooled yet another ignorant cyclist. That is until they got caught at the next light. Right beside me. Awkward! For them at least. I continued where I left off reminding them of the recent account of a cyclist getting killed by a motorist who wasn’t concerned with what’s happening outside their vehicle. I reminded them that had those people been their family, they may have cared more. They came back with the fact that they were concerned about safety. I then asked them if they thought it was safe for a cyclist to swing out in front of traffic on a busy city street that has a dedicated bike lane as cars would be much less likely to expect it and be able to react in time. The conversation turned and they finally began to see my point. I pointed to my helmet and stated simply, “we’re all concerned about safety. And despite what the news says, this isn’t a war.”

I told them to have a nice day and rolled on my way, convinced that they would likely forget this by the next light. However, I’ve now had a positive exchange with a motorist - unfortunately one of my first of what is likely hundreds of encounters over the past 20 some odd years… which could admittedly be at least 50% my fault - so I’m now armed with a fairly good, non reactive, non-confrontational (or much less anyways), informational plan of attack that will hopefully help get people to see things from the curb lane.

It’s this or firebombs and it’s really so hard to keep the petrol from spilling when you’re trying to catch up to a hit and runner.